This and That
by Mystic25
Summary: A little thing set in Season Nine, about these guys called Sam and Dean.


"This and That"

Mystic25

Summary: A little thing set in Season Nine, about these guys called Sam and Dean.

Rating: T for violence and imagery.

A/N: I wrote this at 10:30 at night, just writing what came to my head for a solid hour.

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"_He who has a why to live can bear almost any how." _

~Frederick Nietzsche

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The chair bent with a squeak as Sam was flung into it, breaking the wood apart into toothpick sized pieces.

It was something that had all been done before: being flung to the ground, smashed through solid objects, then allowed to jump back up, then thrown back down again, maybe twice of this cycle if it was a particularly bad day.

Today was a particularly bad day.

Especially when the blood started to leak out of Sam's eyes and he didn't know why, when his legs felt like they were simultaneously burning and freezing. And when he heard as his brother screamed out his name in a way that he had heard too many times; but still never wanted to hear again.

The world shrunk to a pinpoint before Sam could answer Dean, a pinpoint, then an infinitesimal nothing, then an absolute nothing and he stopped remembering things in the conscious world and started remembering things in the subconscious one.

He dreamt.

Flooded in memories of him and Dean, as kids, all the back doors Dean had snuck into to steal them enough peanut butter to last the week, looting the donation bins at the churches for warm coats. Reading to him from library books that were long past overdue fines and were now demanded to be paid in the total worth of the book itself.

The images faded, became dim like a light bulb flickering in bad power or when a ghost let its presence be known. They became the life of the adults they were, the hunters, even with all the steel and knives and blood, Sam still felt Dean's presence having his back, guarding his blind spot, even at 6'4" he had one, and it was sometimes massive.

But Dean was always there.

Except when even the dreams finally blacked out and he wasn't, when nothing was there, then _everything _was there. Pain, blinding and exploding came like his brain was being liquefied and squeezed oozing hot out of his nostrils. Then it all stopped, gone in an instant so fast that Sam couldn't comprehend it, it left him feeling massively cold in the absence of it all.

He blinked his eyes open, the dreams evaporated in a gray light that was one blinding sensitivity to his vision. He clawed at his skin, feeling sticky blood coating his eye sockets, but there was no pain.

He coughed out a lungful of his brother's name.

And just like the rising of the sun, and the tides, Dean was there, probably had never left the entire time Sam had gone somewhere else.

Dean's warm wool jacket, a size too small for Sam's much taller frame settled over him, defrosting the chill in his bones. A hand grasped his forearm, another his back and pulled him up, making him dizzy. But a familiar set of green eyes were reassuring, a "take it easy Sammy" came from a weather worn voice filled with concern.

It was another minute before Sam was able to fully open his eyes to the soft gray light, it was another five before Dean allowed him to stand up from where he had been flung out over concrete. Dean hovered like a worried mother hen the entire time Sam was back to being vertical.

And Sam did his best to brush it off when he was able to balance without falling over, but then he glanced behind him at what was lying on the ground, and he recoiled in a disgusted shock.

It was a twist of mummified looking arms and legs on a stunted torso, claws longer than its forearms, two of them slick with blood, lying beside the remainder of its other arm, cut clean off with the machete that Sam dropped when he was attacked. More blood oozed around the monster's still opened maw, blood that didn't look like it belonged to it, because there was a steady leaking of black from the stump remaining of its other appendage.

Sam looked at Dean with a huff of hard breath, 'what the hell?' and 'what the ever-loving _fuck?'_ blown out in that single moment of air.

Dean shook his head, like he didn't want to talk about it now, and when Sam looked down at himself he understood why. The chill had vanished when he had stood back up and he had been feeling warm, exceptionally warm, even when Dean removed the jacket he had given him. At first Sam thought it was the heat in the meat locker whose refrigeration had shorted out in 2009, leaving the room smelling rancid.

But, it was something else entirely.

Sam was covered in blood all down his shirt and pants like someone had collected it in a bucket like rain water and poured it on him. Jagged slash marks the size of his forearms cut clean through the center of his button down and both legs of his jeans, but no visible wounds were underneath all that gore.

"Dean," Sam doesn't understand, he patted the blood on his pants, it was still warm, and his hands were sticky. It looked like two quarts soaking the fabric, and he didn't _get it; _how was he alive?

He stared at his brother, repeated his name again, demanding an answer.

Dean shook his head, and there was something almost _sad_ that gaze when he did so. "You're okay and that's what matters, alright?" Dean placed a hand on his shoulder.

Sam didn't know what to do, everything was _wrong_ and screamed at him about how all this could be. But Dean stared at him in a way that was begging, like when he wanted Sam to believe that monsters weren't going to kill them so long as they had their father and a working gun with salt rounds and silver bullets.

Sam wasn't a kid anymore, he didn't follow things blindly like a puppy being led on a leash. But he was standing _alive_ in such massive carnage, the monster was dead, and he was alone and breathing with his brother.

No matter how things came to be this way this time, it was what he wanted, where he ultimately belonged.

Sam nodded in the absence of rationality, allowing the moment to exist and not be explained.

Dean poured salt and Holy Water over the creature's husked out corpse and Sam struck a match from the book in his pocket. The monster lit up like dry kindling.

After long moments have passed, and its body was charred down dust, Dean flipped the ancient emergency sprinkler system back on, dousing the still smoking heap down so that it won't ignite the building.

They left after that, walking through the concrete maze back to the car sitting beside a chain link fence slashed with slices of moonlight. Sam climbed into the passenger seat smelling like blood. Dean handed him a towel, throwing an off handed remark about not making his ride smell like a sewer outflow pipe at a butcher shop.

Sam cleaned his face, sitting on the towel until he can change, or better yet, burn his clothes because they were now, in reality, nothing but bloody scraps.

Dean watched him for a long time, like Sam might have disappeared if he blinked, again he looked part sad, part happy.

It made Sam ache for some reason, like he understood, even though he really didn't. But it reminded him that someone had his back, his brother of 35 years in counting, and it was a good feeling.

Dean started the car with a comfortable growl of the engine, the radio came alive with a Styx song. He offered Sam one firm last pat on the shoulder before he pulled off into the night down the road.

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**End**

The last episode ("Bad Boys") was so deep with the undercurrent of Sam and Dean's relationship that it made me want to hug the stuffing out of both of them. It was my inspiration for this fic.

R/R please.

Thank you, and good night.

~Mystic


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